Into Wood

Mischa Photography _{on Google}

Dec 11th, 2011

I contracted Cary for custom kitchen cabinets which were installed with numerous problems which I'll go into more detail on below. After complaining about the problems he attempted to fix a couple of them but his fixes were patches that made things worse or were incomplete forcing me to have my contractor fix his work on one side so my granite could be installed. On the other side of the kitchen we have a wall of cabinets which have misaligned holes drilled for the shelves making them wobbly. Again he wants to patch these by adding more wood to the inside of the cabinets rather than replacing the cabinets with properly drilled holes like they should have been to begin with.
The problems my contractor had to fix include:
1. cabinets were not installed level. Cary's fix was to add more wood on top leaving the underlying cabinets as unlevel. Plus they still weren't level back to front only side to side.
2. Corner cabinets were not really cabinets just cabinet faces with walls from side cabinets. No base and no back were installed. lower and middle shelves were not installed as originally agreed upon. Cary's fix was a partial middle shelf that left a large gap at the back where things could fall down to the lower level.
3. Upper and lower cabinets were misaligned so the hood was not over the range. My contractor fixed. After the other problems and his fixes I didn't trust Cary to fix that right.
4. Microwave space in cabinets was made incorrectly (too large and was not supposed to have a bottom). His fix was to tell me to have my contractor cut holes for the lower lights to work.
5. Fridge opening was made too tall.
6. Lower cabinets were made without backs. This may or may not be standard in some situations, but in our situation we had cabinets that were supposed to be 3" extra deep. Instead they were installed with a 3" spacer behind to float them off the wall. This left a large gap where things could fall behind the cabinets and things would be stuck. His fix was some bent and broken backing wood attached with large scrap wood. My contractor had to replace his backs to make them look finished and not thrown together.
7. Wall of cabinets have adjustable shelves with holes that don't line up leaving them wobbly. His proposed fix was to first turn the pegs on their sides (they still wobble they're so far off) and then to add more wood with new holes to the inside (I'm tired of the patches to fix custom cabinets that should not have any of these problems so I declined and asked for him to rebuild them right or to refund me).
8. bottom of wall of cabinets have a groove cut into the underside. It looks to be an accidental cut but was left as a dust collector (again a reason to replace the wall of cabinets).
9. Cabinet depth above stove hood was made too deep leaving an unsightly gap. His fix was to add a piece of wood so there's not a visible hole, but it still doesn't look right.
10. Garbage pull out is very stiff. He made up something about how it would get easier with weight, but after having used it for a few weeks I can say for sure that's not true or at least not with any practical amount of weight. I think they're just installed wrong and he made up an excuse.
11. toe kicks installed by him were not real wood, were installed with large curves, and were only 1/8" thick and did not cover the hardwood floor that butts up to the cabinet bases. My contractor had to stain new pieces and install replacement toe kicks.
All in all I paid a lot of money for custom cabinets and I got cabinets with a nice facade and a ton of problems much worse then generic cabinets would have been.
Cary is full of excuses and explanations that sound good if you just take his word for it, but don't make any sense when you actually look at the real cabinets and the real problems. I would not recommend Cary Lindenfeld of Into Wood for any cabinet project. His attention to detail is horrible.